


Distance

by hunters_retreat



Series: A Pretty Enough Story [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Soulmates, injured Shiro, protective keith, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 01:57:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: “You lied.  You said Adam was your soulmate.”





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> I know i'm jumping around a bit, but I couldn't wait to get here anymore :P The blanks will be filled in, but this is where my inspiration took me next!

 

 

Shiro hated being a passenger.  He’d never been really great at sitting back and letting someone else drive.  In any area of his life.  Watching Keith maneuver Black through a field of enemy fighters was maddening. 

It was supposed to be a peaceful meeting in a neutral location with a possible ally but the Galra had shown up and tried to take advantage of the fact that it had just been three lions and Atlas wasn’t with them. 

It wasn’t a long fight to get to the lions, but Shiro had been slashed across the back when he’d pushed Matt out of the way of an enemy knife on the planet.  He felt it in every move, with every breath, but it was superficial.  It wasn’t until Keith signaled that they were clear that Shiro felt it.

Lance had taken Matt and Sam and gone one way, while Hunk had flown off another way with Iverson and Ryner of the Olkari.  Keith had stayed behind with Black to make sure the other two got free, as well as their possibly ally, before he began to weave away from the fighters.

“We’re going to take the long way back to the ship, just in case anyone is following,” Keith said as he got out of the pilot’s seat and looked at Shiro.  “I better get a look at you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding all over my lion.”

Shiro shook his head but he knew better than to fight Keith in regards to his well-being.  If Keith had been the one injured, he would have ignored it.  And Shiro would have kept at it until he’d looked at it. 

Even if things had been odd between them the last few months.

“Alright, I give in,” Shiro said with a small smile. 

Keith didn’t deserve the distance between them.  Shiro could see the way Keith eyed him sometimes, wondering what he’d done to cause it.  There was nothing.  In fact, it was Shiro.

Because Shiro knew the truth now and he didn’t know how to deal with it.  He didn’t know how to accept it.  He’d seen the mark on Keith’s right bicep.  So many things made sense, so many things just clicked in place for him, and yet there was no way Shiro could accept it. 

Keith was his soulmate. 

Keith deserved so much better than a broken-down soldier who lived in his own clone’s body.  Especially when Shiro could see something brewing between Keith and someone else.  He deserved to be happy, and Shiro was happy for him. 

No matter that it was breaking his heart, little by little.  Because Shiro hadn’t seen the soulmark before he’d realized how beautiful Keith had become, how strong and fierce and absolutely magnificent.  He deserved someone else to notice it too.

“Come on.  Have a seat and get your jacket off,” Keith ordered.

He almost saluted but instead he did as he’d been told while Keith got out his first aid kit.  He set his jacket aside and got out of his button up quickly.  He sat down with his back facing the back of the lion where Keith was.  It wasn’t like he needed to watch out the front to make sure nothing was coming, but he hated to look away all the same.

He struggled to get the tee-shirt he wore under it and felt Keith’s hands on his back, helping him push the shirt over his head.  Shiro looked at the bloody bundle of cloth in his hand and sighed.

“It’s a good thing they made so many extra shirts for me,” Shiro said with a sigh.  They’d just delivered a new set of uniforms to him earlier in the week, fitted for his Altean arm.  He’d had to have a whole series of casual shirts made as well.  He was grateful for the arm, but the new shoulder anchor for it didn’t fit well with regular clothes, even if he cut the arm off.

“Those extra layers probably saved more than a few layers of skin, you know,” Keith reminded him. 

Shiro smiled as he looked over his shoulder at Keith, but winced as it pulled at his back.

“Hold on,” Keith said as he grabbed something out of the kit.  “Just let me get this taken care of and you can make some really bad joke about it.”

“My jokes are good,” Shiro told him.

“Your humor is a bit morbid.”

Shiro shrugged.  “You have no sense of humor.  What would you know?”

He could hear Keith’s small huff though and he knew his friend was humoring him. 

He felt the cool of the antiseptic against his skin and then the pain began to recede.  He let out a relieved sigh as he felt Keith began to poke around his back.

“It’s not bad.  Just superficial,” Keith reassured him.

“Told you it was nothing,” he said.

“You were still bleeding and Black wasn’t happy about it.”

Shiro smiled at the thought that the robot lion might harbor some good will towards him.  He didn’t doubt it.  Black was loyal and deserving of his Paladin. 

“Black has started to take after you, fussing about me like that,” Shiro teased. 

Keith didn’t say anything, but a few minutes later Shiro felt the bandage on his back.  “You should be good now.  How does that feel?” Keith asked as he moved to stand in front of Shiro.

Shiro moved his arms a little to see if the bandage was going to stick and he nodded.  “Feels good.  Thanks, Keith.”

Keith didn’t say anything and Shiro looked up to find Keith staring, wide eyed.

At Shiro’s arm.

“What the hell?” Keith asked.

Shiro closed his eyes for a second to try to wrap his brain around what he could say.  He’d gotten used to the fact that his soulmark was gone.  He still forgot that when his soul had been placed into this body that his soulmark had come with it, on the only bicep still attached. 

“It’s on the wrong arm,” Keith said before Shiro could think of an answer.

“It used to be on the other one.  I lost it when the Galra replaced my arm.  When I was put into this body, it came back.  But since I still didn’t have the right arm, it showed up on my left bicep instead.”

He could tell then that he’d said the wrong thing.  Because the right thing would have been to be surprised by Keith’s pronouncement and not, unwittingly, acknowledge that he knew where Keith’s mark was.  Keith took a few steps back to lean against Black’s wall, his arms crossed over his chest.  He was closing off and Shiro didn’t know what to do about it.

“You lied.  You said Adam was your soulmate.”

Keith didn’t sound happy, or angry, or sad even.  His voice was carefully neutral and Shiro knew that meant he was covering.  He just didn’t know for sure what he was trying to keep Shiro from seeing. 

“I never cared about soulmates,” he admitted.  “You know what it was like for my mom.”  Keith was one of the few people Shiro had ever confided in about his mother’s soulmate and her abuse at his hands.  “I was in love with Adam, even though he wasn’t my soulmate.  He didn’t have a mark so when people assumed, I never said anything and Adam implied a lot.”

“You never said anything.  Not even to me.”

“It was too soon before I left for Kerberos to talk about it and after that… well, I had other things on my mind than soulmates.”

“I meant that you’re my soulmate.”

“Oh.”  Shiro let out a deep breath.  “That.”

“Yeah, oh, that.”

Shiro looked down at his hands because he had no idea how to handle this.  He’d never planned to tell Keith.  It was just dumb luck that he’d been hurt and Keith had seen the mark. 

“How long have you known?” Keith finally broke the silence between them.

“After the fight with Sendak.  Not then but, you were in the hospital.  I came to see you and … they hadn’t covered it yet.  I asked them too.”

“That was a year ago.”

Shiro nodded because there was nothing else to say to that.  He didn’t know how Keith felt about soulmates, not really, but he could hear the hurt in Keith’s voice and the fact that Shiro kept it from him had to be a big part of that.

“Keith,” he tried, “It’s not about you.  It’s just… me.”

“Yeah I get it.  You don’t believe in soulmates, so why the hell would you believe in us.”

“Keith that’s not-”

“I have to check in with the others.”

Keith walked away and put his helmet back on before Shiro could stop him.  He could hear Keith check in with the others and he leaned back against the cold metal of the bench he’d been sitting on.  He figured Keith would come back when he was ready to talk, but he felt his eyes grow droopy and time seemed to stretch. 

He woke to Keith shaking him.  “Come on, Shiro.  We’re back.  We need to get you to the doctors.”

He was too groggy to do anything else and he realized he was probably hurt worse that Keith wanted him to know.  As soon as they were on the Atlas, a stretcher was there and he was taken away to be treated.

Keith wasn’t there when he woke.  He didn’t visit in the three days Shiro was in the medical bay. 

As much as he tried to deny it, Keith’s absence hurt.  But Shiro ignored it because above anything else, he wanted Keith to be happy.  If Keith didn’t want to be with him, to be around his soulmate, Shiro would give him the only thing he could.

His distance.    

 


End file.
